Blog Archive

A paper conservator at an art museum explains how scientific analysis of artworks using different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum is informing understanding of how the artists worked, and how the appearance of their pantings has changed with time.

Welcome to the Planetary Society's new website! What you're looking at right now is the result of months of continuous effort by the very small Web team here at the Society. Our goal was to create a new home for the Planetary Society on the Internet that reflects the way things have changed since our last redesign: changes in the Planetary Society, changes in space exploration, and changes in the way the Internet functions.

Do planets circle our closest stellar neighbors, the system loved by science fiction: Alpha Centauri? We don’t know. But, Debra Fischer, Julien Spronck, and their colleagues at Yale University, in part with Planetary Society support, are trying to find out.

As someone living on Earth here at the start of the 21st Century, you and I are able to communicate with more people than any humans before us, ever– since the beginning of time. So, welcome planetary surfers from all over our world. Our new site makes it easier for you and me to be in touch, and especially for you to be in touch with our growing community of space enthusiasts, buddies, colleagues, new acquaintances, and button-wearing Space Geeks®.

I enthused about these Helene images the first time they came down from Cassini, and then forgot about them, and then was thrilled anew a couple of weeks ago when Daniel Macháček posted his version, processed from data published by the Cassini imaging team on April 1.

With the latest piece of the puzzle just published in a scientific journal, a solar system mystery that has perplexed people for more than 20 years has been solved, truly thanks to the support of Planetary Society members.

The Twitterverse is buzzing this morning with news that the Science Programme Committee of the European Space Agency has recommended that the next large European mission be JUICE, a mission to explore the three icy Galilean satellites and eventually to orbit Ganymede.

If you want to test your planetary knowledge, or just have a masochistic love of tests, I’ve posted the midterm I’ve given to my students in my online Introductory Astronomy and Planetary Science class at California State University Dominguez Hills.

A classified U.S. military satellite recently launched into an orbital inclination of 123 degrees. What makes this trajectory so unique? Pondering the answer affords the opportunity to learn some deceptively tricky concepts about the nature of all spacecraft orbits.

A long-awaited data set is finally public (well, long-awaited by me, at least). The Rosetta team has now published their data from the July 10, 2010 flyby of asteroid (21) Lutetia. This data set is absolutely stunning, and my friends in the amateur image processing community wasted no time in creating art out of it.